Recent reads

Some recent reads:

The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy. What a great book. Never saw the movie, but will soon. The characters were superb, the afterword even better (had no idea the author's mom...oh my). Even more shocking, had no idea The Black Dahlia was based on an actual case! 

Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition, by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Found this at Savers for $2.99, but then got 30% off! Great, short travelogue. Great little book, will donate it to the Goodwill. 

Election, by Tom Perrotta. Read this back in 2014 or 2015, on a short bus (marshrutka, or маршрутка) from Bishkek to Kara-kol on the east side of lake Issyk Kul. Picked this for our family book club. I'd really like to rewatch the movie. Matthew Broderwick and Reese Witherspoon were superb in it. He's written more, but I haven't gotten into any of his others (yet?). 

Currently I'm reading The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe. I've also started The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein on Audible. My SIL picked it for the family book club, which is funny because my wife just finished reading it a week ago! (Not a fan.) I'm also continuing my translation of the masterful novel Mi Stelojn Jungis al Revado, by Mikaelo Bronŝtejn.

99 Novels

 Had to buy this book. First off, it is written by Anthony Burgess. Best author. Secondly, it is filled with suggested novels. I can't not look at a book that recommends books for me to read. 

Turns out I already read 12 of the novels Burgess recommends. The Waughs and Greenes were easy. I've read all of them (as far as I know). I "boxed" a few dozen that I intend on reading. Once done, I'll check that box. And I'll blog about it, of course.

Herman Wouk, I already found his The Caine Mutiny on Audible and that'll be my next Audible read. The Once and Future King, of course, I've been wanting to read for years. I think it is also available on Audible. And of course the Muriel Spark novels on the list. Love that author. Nevil Shute's novel (No Highway) in this list I will check out. Isherwood. Wonderful. I also have one of the Malamud (The Assistant) already, so that'll be an easy choice. And Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe has been on my list for a couple years. 

20 Books of Summer

 

Thought I'd try this this summer. But I have to pick 20 books? Thankfully, the host at 746 Books is very flexible. If I decide later to change my list or reduce it, no biggie!

Therefore, here's the 20 books 15 books* I want to read between 1 June and 1 September:

The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel.

The Scar, by China Mieville.

The Ferryman, by Justin Cronin.

Mothers Don't, by Katixa Agirre.

Victory City, by Salmon Rushdie.

Lucretia and the Kroons, by Victor LaValle.

Piercing, by Ryu Murakami.

A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine.

The History Man, by Malcolm Bradbury.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski.

Mothering Sunday, by Graham Swift.

Down There on a Visit, by Christopher Isherwood.

Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami.

An Armful of Warm Girl, by William Spackman.

The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy.

Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaatje.

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth.

Life with Picasso, by Francoise Gilot.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, by P.G. Wodehouse.

The Short End of the Sonnenallee, by Thomas Brussig.

#20booksofsummer23 

*On 1 July, I realized I wouldn't be able to read these 20 by 1 September. I'm reading too many books not on this list!

(underline=read; underline & blue=link to my review; strikethrough=dropped 20 to 15)

Some recent reads

 Here's a few reads.

Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut. What can I say? Vonnegut is incredible. This is the seventh of his I've read, and the most serious. From the very start of this book, I thought: This sounds familiar. Sure enough, once I was done, I looked at IMDB and found the 1996 movie with Nick Nolte. Never saw it. But would like to see it because the book was awesome. And the ending...unexpected. 

Ukridge, by P.G. Wodehouse. Let's start with the pronunciation. I always thought it was /uk-ridge/ and not /yuk-ridge/. But as I listened to this book, I finally learned this pronunciation. Anyway, great book. Great character. Will read more of the Ukridge books. (I'd read Love Among the Chickens years and years ago, but didn't remember Ukridge was a character in it.) Nothing more fun to read about than a British gentleman with crazy idea about raising money who borrows/steals from his friends and whose grand ideas always fail. Wonderful.

Daingerfield Island, by John Wasowicz. A first book for the author set in the area we live (about a mile's walk from our home). Not really good. Too perfect. Another of those. Sure, two car crashes and a messed up arm, but yeah, take the cop's gun and chase the killer in a BMW and purposefully crash that car to stop a killer, then try to shoot the bad-guy after your third car crash in two days. No. Stop. Will not read anymore of this author, despite the fun of his novels being set in my local area.

This Census-Taker, by China Mieville. The man can write. This is the least sci-fi-y of all his books. It really is weird. Not as weird as The Last Days of New Paris, but still weird. And very unique: from the first chapter, the switch, sometimes within paragraphs, of first-person and third-person. But wow, at the end, switching between first-, second- and third-person within three paragraphs. Masterfully done. Thank you, sir.

April 2023

 Books read this month:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke.
• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Family book club choice. Better than I remembered.
• Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. Holy crap do I love this author. This is my fourth of his. Will keep reading him.
• A Fine Red Rain, by Stuart Kaminsky. Another great Porfiry Rostnikov. This time with the Moscow circus.
• Mars, by Ben Bova. I thought he'd written this in the 1970s, due to the "Redman" comments. Who even said or cared about Native Americans or American Indian politics in the '80s or '90s? Imagine my surprise that it was written in 1992. 
• The Songs of Distant Earth, by Clarke. As good as I remember. Why do I love colonization scifi stories so much? This is the Clarke I want Folio Society to publish.

Books bought this month:

• Victory City, by Salmon Rushdie. Yes, yes, I hated his blaming-whitey crap in Quichotte. But damn, it's Rushdie. Everything else of his I've read is great. This for just $6.99. Had to try it. Fingers crossed!
• Writings from Ancient Egypt, by Toby Wilkinson. Read his great The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. This author is great. Also have one of his about the mania around Egypt in the early 1900s. Looking forward to reading both.
• Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel. Loved her Shakespearean Station Eleven. 
• Daingerfield Island, by John Wasowicz. Local author. My wife's choice for the family book club. Will read it in May.
• Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Wife and I want hardback versions of great literature. Before "they" change the stories and words. 
• Author! Author!, by P.G. Wodehouse. Looking forward to reading this.
• The Postman, by David Brin. Read this years ago. Much better than the movie, which I still loved. This one signed by the author!
• Empires of the Word, by Nicholas Ostler. Folio Society version. Love this book and this edition is awesome. A part in this book was the basis for my thesis question in grad school.

Two Sci-Fi reads

 Our recent family read was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. I had read this book back in the late '80s or early '90s, so was unsure how I'd feel about it this time. When I re-read Ringworld after decades, or Stranger in a Strange Land, I was amazed at how terribly written they were and wondered what I had seen in them when I was in my 20's. 

Spoilers:

Ender's Game was not those. It was well written, albeit still for a different audience: males in the 13-25 year age group, I'd say. I enjoyed reading it, but all along thought it could have been just as good if the candidate-kids weren't so young. Ender begins his training at 6 years old, as if that's normal (after all, his entire launch group are all the same age), and he saves all humankind at the age of 12. Why not add a few more years? Start them at 9 if you needed to get them before puberty, say, or before bad habits settle in. My wife countered that due to the invasion fleet's timing, they had to grab Ender at 6 years old. I'm not quite sure: seems all the older kids at Battle School had been there since they were 6, as well. And the reader was to assume that coming behind Ender were other kids who could have saved humanity. (Bean, perhaps?) 

While I didn't remember much of the book, I did remember some of the 2013 movie. Thus it was no big reveal to me at the end. I did, however, remember from reading it how Ender later becomes Speaker for the Dead. No, I probably won't read that one, unless our book club picks it later.

Spoilers done.

While reading that one, I listened to 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke. 

Spoilers below:

I had never read this book. I had read his follow-on, 2010, years ago, and of course loved the movie (Helen Mirren!), but this book and movie (1968, Stanley Kubrick, dr) I'd never read nor seen. I have an image in my head from my youth, early 1970's, of a waiting room or office in a space station (I think my parents were watching it on TV), but that's about it for the movie. 

This book was fun, and a bit different from what I think the movie was or definitely what the 2010 movie showed: the final arrival of the Discovery was not Jupiter, as 2010 implies, but Saturn. That's where the action stops. That's where Bowman sees the monolith and notes "it's full of stars." 

Looking at the Wiki for the film, the action stops at Jupiter. In the book, Bowman's partner, Frank Poole, is knocked off Discovery and set adrift toward Saturn, never to return. Looks like the film took a different direction. I'll have to watch the movie one of these days.

Spoilers no mo'.

Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth is still my favorite of his. 100% recommended. 

Couple notes about the Audible version: The actual author introduces the story! So that's kind of unique. But also, this Audible version continually restarted me at chapter 1. I'd listen to it at night, set the timer for 30 minutes, then in the morning in my car ready to drive to work, it would be back at chapter 1 again. First time it was a fluke (Did I forget to set the timer last night?), but when it happened a second time, I contacted Audible. A nice chatbot/possible human had me remove it from my phone and redownload it and voila, fixed. Until the next morning. I decided to take a screenshot whenever I was done. Then later just Remove from device and redownload every time, because for some reason it remembered where I was when I did that. Thankfully it wasn't too long (9 hours? 6? Can't recall.), but this was the first such problem I've ever had with an Audible book. Caveat auditor!

Two pretty good, and classic, sci-fi reads lately. Currently I'm reading through Empires of the Word, by Nicholas Ostler. I'd read this book many years ago and used one of the author's conclusions as the basis for my thesis Russian Language Prestige in the States of the Former Soviet Union, available for free on the internet, you know, if you're having trouble sleeping. The author was so kind and supportive when I reached out to him in 2007 and asked him questions about his conclusions and told him my proposed thesis question. (I'm happy to note also that my thesis has been cited in multiple actual books by actual researchers. w00t!)

Fiction-wise, I'm reading another Victor LaValle (I'm obsessed), recently published, called Lone Women. Of course, it is great so far. 

I'm also reading The Copyeditor's Handbook for my Copyediting class with UCSD. 

A couple recent reads, and a partial

 Finished a couple in the last days and mostly finished another book.

The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer. Listened to this on Audible. Great book, reminded me very much of From Here to Eternity. This one deals with the Pacific theater, like Eternity, and follows a recon platoon and their travails, trials and tribulations. Very sad in parts, very non-PC (as soldiers generally are, even today), but so well written. Mailer head hops, but not aggressively nor illogically. Mailer knows his subject (he was drafted into the Army, and was a recon soldier) and writes intelligently and clearly. Some of the back and forth between platoon-mates reminds me of growing up in eastern Pennsylvania in the '70s. A long book, but well worth it. And the Audible version's narrator was awesome, and just happens to be Norman Mailer's eighth child, John Buffalo Mailer. 

Viktimoj, de Julio Baghy. Sendisputebla klassikaĵo de Esperanta literaturo. Julio Baghy, poeto kaj verkisto, militkaptito, estis tre respekta verkisto. Mi havas du liajn librojn: ĉi-tiun kaj Sur Sanga Tero. Mi legis Viktimoj antaux ĉirkaŭ 20 jaroj, sed nur memoris iomete pri ĝi. La libro taŭgas pri kelkaj militkaptitoj je WWI en Rusio, ĉe la bordo kun Ĉinio, kaj okazigis dum la civila milito en Ruslando. Esperanto estas la komuna lingvo de iuj kaptitoj (kune kun la rusa kaj la hungara), sed Esperanto ne estas la temo de la libro. Sed mi scias ke Baghy aŭ lernis aŭ instruis la lingvon en militkaptitejo. Ne gravas: la rakonto estas pri amo, milito, amikeco, perdo. Mi ĝin rekomendas!

Finally, we recently got the Folio Society edition of Norman Davies's Europe. My wife loves the book, and even had one of our kids use it in her junior and senior year of homeschooling. It is three volumes with additional plates and maps and sidebars. Very well done. I read the first volume. I'll read the remaining two slowly throughout the year. 

Some recent reads

 I am still reading. Don't worry, dear reader(s). Just been busy at work and home. (New windows!)

Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson. The first one was chosen by my SIL for our family book club. I'd read it maybe 20-25 years ago. Loved it. Gibson of course was the inventor of the word cyberspace and boy could he ever create a world. I just had to read the following two of The Sprawl trilogy. The third one in particular is nicely done, wrapping up some questions I had after the second. (This is a lot of Gibson as I'd just finished Agency [The Peripheral #2] right before she picked Neuromancer.) 

McGraw-Hill Education Handbook of English Grammar & Usage, by Mark Lester & Larry Beason. Book for my copyediting class, first class of a 4-class certification. Very handy book, and much lighter than CMOS 17th edition! Don't have much more to say about this book. I used the third edition, which has a wonderful chapter near the back on eggcorns. If you have never heard this word, here are some examples: Your point is mute (vice moot). I watched her last night lip-singing (vice lip syncing). I gave my kids free reign (vice rein).

The Rosetta Stone, by Robert Sole. A Folio Society volume which I found in our local used bookstore for only $13. In perfect condition with the slipcase. Great history of the actual decipherment. My only complaint about this book is that in the entirety of this book there is not one picture of the Stone or is there a copy of the actual Greek, Hieratic, or hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone!

So there you go. At 15 books read for the year so far. Currently listening on Audible to Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (25 hours) and reading Viktimoj by Julio Baghy, a novel about POWs in a Russian POW camp, some of whose only common language is Esperanto. (This is semi-autobiographical as the author was in this very situation.)

Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica (Sarah Moses tr.)

 Disturbing. 

Spoilers abajo:

The world has changed. We can no longer eat animals. There's a virus they carry that harms humans. Vegan revenge. But then scientists prove that plant protein isn't sufficient nutrition. Humans need meat. They need special meat.

Thus begins the raising of humans for food. They're called 'head' instead of man or woman. Male and female head. It's illegal to eat anything with a first and last name. Unless they volunteer. Strong males are put aside for the game parks, where hunters can chase them down, kill them, eat them, mount the heads in their trophy rooms. 

All terribly disgusting. 

The main character is gifted a female head by one of his business contacts. There are those in this terrible world who raise "domestic head" in their homes, so this is not unusual. The problem for Marcos is this particular head is gorgeous. His wife has left him after the death of their son, his father is in a home with dementia, things are not good for him. He decides to "enjoy" his gift. 

Eight months later the reader discovers Jasmine (he's named the head, another no-no) is pregnant. Then begins a dangerous time when Marcos could be discovered to have had intercourse with cattle (punishable by death in the slaughterhouse). His father dies, a truck carrying a shipment of head is ambushed by Scavengers who kill the driver, an inspector comes by to certify that he still has the female head. He manages to get through all this without getting caught, but when Jasmine starts to give birth, he has to call in help. And who does he know with medical training? His wife of course.

She's disgusted with what her husband did, until she sees the baby boy. Then words like "mine" and "ours" come from her lips. Marcos then grabs a club and knocks Jasmine out. He drags her to the barn to slaughter her, as is his right in this new, terrible world. 

Spoilers termine.

Gross book. The chapters going through the process were particularly hard to get through. Thank goodness the book was short. This is book #2 of the 10 translated books I want to read this year, this one from the Spanish.

February 2023

 Low month again. Books read:

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab. Awesomely fun read and unique.
• No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, by Condoleezza Rice. Listened on Audible, 29+ hours! But read by Dr. Rice! Loved it.
• Вселенная Удачников, Роман Злотников / A Universe of Losers, by Roman Zlotnikov. Have had this since my first year in Moscow and even started it years ago. Read and listened to this. Fun story. Didn't help my DLPT, though.
• Agency, by William Gibson. #2 after The Peripheral. Great book. Watched the series as I was finishing Agency and I can highly recommend it. But read The Peripheral first.
• Neuromancer, by Gibson. My SIL's choice for our family reading group. She had no idea I was reading another Gibson. This is a sign, thus I'm reading the follow-on to this one (Count Zero) right now.

Books bought:

• The Lord of the Rings, deluxe illustrated edition. Bought for my wife's birthday. Illustrations by Alan Lee.
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. Will need for a future copyediting class. Handy to have around.
• The Man Who Walked Like a Bear and The Dog Who Bit a Policeman, by Stuart Kaminsky. Porfiry Rostnikov #6 and #12. Kindle deals for two bucks each.
• Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. Pre-ordered. Love this author.
• A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers. Wayfarers #2. Loved the first one. Two dollar Kindle deal.
• The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain. No idea why I bought this. Thought it was for my wife, but now I'm not too sure. 

I haven't written many reviews lately, and that's ok. Just got back from a two-week trip to Namibia. What a beautiful country! Heard one of the famous "click languages": Nama, or Damara or Khoekhoe (pronounced /kway-kway/). Five different clicks. One very nice lady tried to teach the clicks to me. I think I got one or two of them correct. The rest, not so much. 

January 2023

 What the hell happened to my January post? I was asleep at the wheel!

Books read:

• Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn
• The Devil in Silver, by Victor LaValle
• Red Chameleon, by Stuart Kaminsky
• Three Women in a Mirror, by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
• The Sword of Honour Trilogy, by Evelyn Waugh. Read through for the second or third time. Where was Goodreads twenty years ago, dammit?!

Books bought:

• Children of Cain, by S L Myers! Wife's book is not only out in Kindle, but in pb too!
• Joy of Cooking, not in Kindle deals. Got it in hb because it is so good. Need to know how to cook woodchuck? This is the cookbook for you!
• Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy, by Olivia Manning. Started her Balkan one and it's good, just wasn't in the mood to continue.
• No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, by Condoleezza Rice. Bought on Audible and just finished it. Great memoir and she reads it! Fantasy fulfilled. 
• The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age, by Andrew Pettegree. Looked good at $1.99.
• Cooking with Booze: From Beer Batter to Vodka Jelly, by George Bone & Lucy Baker. Because booze is good.
• Three Women in a Mirror
• Red Chameleon
• Rediscoveries, ed by David Madden. Great book of authors talking about forgotten novels that they recommend. This book suggested by the wonderful author of Neglected Books blog.

Five books kinda short for me, but the Waugh was 711 pages. And merely hours into February I finished The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, a great book I'll add to my February post next month.